It’s A Boy!

The wait is finally over, the baby is here!

He arrived 10 minutes into the Year of the Horse, 31 (mostly boring) hours after being induced.

He was born “watching the stars”, according to our lovely German midwife, an expression she translated from her native language for babies born facing up rather than down. In another culture, this might have earned him the name Stargazer. But my Western sensibilities cringe at the thought of giving someone a name that’s a constant reminder of the relationship between their face and their mother’s bits.

Still, I love having a “watching the stars” baby. He’s obviously somewhat of a rebel from the get-go.

When the midwife placed him on my chest, all mucky and angry, the first thing I did was open his tiny little hands to check his palm creases. Seeing more than one was such a huge relief after so many months of worrying about the possibility of Down Syndrome.

Only after checking his hands did I look over the rest of him. Lots of hair, long feet and a slightly off-centre circular bruise on his forehead. It was purple and puffy, with deep forehead wrinkles, making him look like a tiny beat-up Klingon.

We named him Avery Sơn. Darling Man wanted a “strong” name for him because of all the stressful (and stupid) medical advice we were given early on. The name Avery means “wise” and Sơn (rhymes with urn) is a Chinese-Vietnamese name that means “mountain”. We can’t register the ơ on his Australian birth certificate, so his middle name will look like Son. Which, naturally, makes Boney M’s Sunny his theme song. All in all, quite a good deal as far as a name goes.

Of course, I will have to give him the same privacy arrangement I gave his big sister and use a pseudonym on the blog. How does Sunny sound?

He’s six days old now and it seems like we’ve always been a family of four. Miss M is besotted with her new baby brother. She could spend hours crouched over him talking loudly about his chubby cheeks and chubby nose and chubby arms. She can’t wait for him to grow big enough to play with her.

 
 
If you haven’t done so already, like The Dropout Diaries on Facebook

By: Barbara

A career girl who dropped out, traveled, found love, and never got around to going home again. Now wrangling a cross-cultural relationship and two third culture kids.